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thanks a lot for the indication. I was actually thinking about switching from Vista 32-bit to a 64-bit OS, would I see a big difference in terms of speed? (I have never tried 64-bit before that's why I ask)

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No, you would only see visible speedup in intensive tasks. Ability to use more RAM and wider registers are the main advantages.

If comparing win64 with linux64, there's the additional fact that win apps that are available as 64-bit versions can be counted with two hands. And half of those are open-source. On linux most if not all apps work 64-bit.

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To touch on your point about RAM. Right now, I have 4GB of RAM but I was told that a 32-bit OS (which I have right now) can only utilize 3GB or so. Basically, if I install a 64-bit OS, I'll be able to fully utilize my RAM?

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I see, thanks a lot for your help. I just have one last one again about the switch to 64-bit. For processors that support 64-bit, when switching to a 64-bit OS, is there a need to change anything in the Bios or it's done automatically since the processor already has the 64-bit feature?

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I see, thanks a lot for your help. I just have one last one again about the switch to 64-bit. For processors that support 64-bit, when switching to a 64-bit OS, is there a need to change anything in the Bios or it's done automatically since the processor already has the 64-bit feature?

I appreciate your help!

All x86 processors actually start up in 16-bit mode for the BIOS to load. Once the BIOS power-on self-test is complete and it hands off control to the bootloader to load the OS kernel, the kernel tells the CPU what mode it has to run in: 16-bit mode, 32-bit mode, or 64-bit mode. The CPU then switches to the correct mode and loads the OS kernel and off you go. If the kernel wants to run in a mode unsupported by the CPU (such as telling a 32-bit-only CPU to run in 64-bit mode), then you immediately get an error and the computer quits loading the kernel.

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The 32bit > 4GB/3GB is not exactly true. Any recent CPU will support PAE (well since the pentium pro or so). This enables 36bit memory support and so can support 64GB of ram.

It's not supported i dont think in microsofts desktop os, but is in it's server versions. On linux you can just install the PAE kernel. it's an easy apt search and install...

However on linux, there is very good 64bit support so PAE really is not needed any more. I've been running 64bit Ubuntu 8.10 and 8.04 on a variety of desktop machines and it's always been fine. There were problems with flash etc... but thats in the past.

Don't think for one second that a 64bit OS will speed anything up though. That's just lying to yourself. It'll do about as much as that 10mhz overclock on your cpu ;-)